


Three Years After Five

by RectifiedPear



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Adult Max (Camp Camp), Aged up Max, Aged-Up Character(s), Grown Up, M/M, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 04:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RectifiedPear/pseuds/RectifiedPear
Summary: There's a lot of reasons to leave, he only needs one reason to stay.





	Three Years After Five

Max thinks about the passage of years as trees fly past his peripheral and his shoes sink into mud. His hoodie flaps behind him, new look getting destroyed as tree branches snag threads and he yanks free. There's a burning in his throat like bile, as he inhales and exhales, puffing and heaving, sucking in air without stopping to catch his breath that now shakes through his frame.

It was a larger frame, muscle-bound and built up from track and football -the only way he got around so many of his bad grades. But graduation had done nothing to keep him using it for such, the leagues were often traveling, a thing Max would not allow himself to do just yet. There was something here for him still. He was running towards it. Hoping to see if it would be for him, or be gone, and he'd be pushed into accepting the sign ons.

The place felt smaller, he was gasping for air and jerking away at the call of birds. Their shadows breaking away the ground with great dark swoops. 

Camp Campbell had a small fire off, where there was camping. Max gasped the taste of smoke in, coughing as it hurt him some. He'd been in worse situations with fire there. He'd not gotten to go back after age fifteen. Three years had parted the system he'd had. School, then Camp Camp. School, Camp Camp. School. Camp Camp. There was less and less time with his parents, and at sixteen, he'd been dropped, and school had been him and a room mate. Like collage dorms he'd never experience. 

Max breached bushes and scanned the place, aware if they'd increased security, he would be caught, and worse, maybe he'd be seen as he was cuffed and dragged off. Mastering breaking and entering, his house burgling skills were nothing of use in the woods. Only the skills made from five years of a guiding hand.

Max's blue-green eyes became tiny, pupils turning into pin pricks. Gwen's aging has never stood out before, five years there made it subtle, three years not has made it stand out, jagged and noticeable. Like old pictures beside new.

She has the same unamused expression and same tone with new kids. _Still the same old bitch._ Despite himself, he smiles. Something they used to pin to a board with a counter. Times Max Has Smiled. He can't remember what it was at when he stopped coming back. Maybe it was ten.

He thinks.

No, probably just five.

It's a red tuft gelled back that brings him from what might have been half an hour crouching in the bushes watching kids who are not his friends or meaningful gather around the doors. David has aged so nice, more crows feet around his bags, where Max has destroyed sleeping schedules and senses of safety. He has a smile, the same as Max has always known, but those eyes have learned to be wary.

It's still his David. Max rests into the bushes, heels rocked back onto. The sound of squirrels and platipi do nothing to budge him. His eyes are on David always, even when he moves out of sight. _Does he remember me? What? Of course that asswipe does!_ His chest becomes pinched, pained at the imagined scene. Him walking up and not being recognized. Gwen takes the girls and it's not Max notices David's group's small, smaller than it ever was. He occupies them and takes a 'coffee break', something that makes Max crane his head in confusion. 

The kids are well-behaved and young, they're a better group than the original ones were. It seems he's not alone in never coming back, even those three to five years younger than him that could apply, aren't there. _How's that feel? That we all outgrew you, dickweed?_

Despite himself, he moves towards the lodge, a place bigger than it once was, and lets him in. He's aware eighteen means this can be permanent. Eighteen means he'll be held to his actions. Eighteen means this is stalking and assault or harassment or burglary, or attempted murder. It's whatever they report it as. Sixteen-year-old Max could get away because football career and being still young, but his rap sheet is too long filled with minor things.

He could back out and bail, he could still run. Half the cameras are broken, and the other half face the wrong way. It's not in Max to run unless he's losing. He shuts the door less than soft and at first David's coffee spills as he pulls back, creamer and dark black fluids mixing on the counter and trailing upon the floor in steaming micro-puddles. Those green eyes are alert, wide, as if he knows he's in trouble before he sees Max. When he finally takes him in, whatever his words were, a 'don't' something, die. 

“Hey, David.”

Nothing in his mouth, he gulps. Thirty-one years old and amazing, won't be thirty-two until Max is almost nineteen, he's always found the detail dumb. A thirteen year age difference, and it means nothing once he's an adult. Math class and history class had taught him people age sixty often married those age twenty. His brain had filed it all away.

Thinking nothing of words and history. Of numbers and people.

“M-Max. Wow, it's been –“

“Three years.”

He's reminded of those assaults before, of how David can call for help right now, like he did when the fifteen-year-old punched him out cold to save him and he awoke assuming murder. Like he did when the ten-year-old would do things that got them in deep water. When at age thirteen, David had helped him and then gotten hurt. All things never pushed against him. David's hands shake and he curses as coffee gets upon him.

“Wh-what brings you back, buddy?”

Max thinks on a million lies and lengthy explanations, all of which are very un-Max-like, then cuts to the chase. “I got a football career. It'll take me states away, to dorms and games in cities I've never heard of, places with food that sounds like horse shit on a stick and hookers with big fat tits.”

“Oh.” It's small and tiny, and vanishes among the hiss of the coffee pot. David's gaze goes everywhere, then to him. “Congrats. Guess this is goodbye.”

“It can be.” His fingers curl. “Or not.”

“O-or not? Max, I have nothing to do with your football car –“ Pressed back to the counter, the no-longer-taller-than-him male gasps. Their eyes lock, Max rolls his once before shrugging. “Max. I-is there something you need from me?”

“You're the only thing that keeps me from going, David.”

Confusion, a glance around him. Looking to see if anyone is coming in. They're not. Gwen's likely forgot he exists, and will until the sun vanishes down beneath the horizon and she comes back. “I-I – How am I-”

He rests his hands on either side of David's shoulder's, leaning in to smell his shampoo and cologne and want to be so blunt there is only yes or no left to reply. “Tell me you feel nothing for me, tell me to get the fuck away from you, and I'll go.”

Rattled, the next two minutes are soft breaths and David opening and shutting his mouth. He looks away, for the hundredth time, likely pondering how to do the 'right thing', but it pains him. “I-I would be lying if you didn't mean a lot to me.”

“But can I mean _more_ to you than a lot, David?!”

His camp councilor shrivels under his gaze, looking shocked, then considering. They've seen too many weird things for the idea of two grown legal adults with an age gap to be life-shattering. David trembles harder, as if the answer hurts him. 

“You're scared.”

A string of legal topics begin, how people might say the camp was a cover up for – Max stops him there.

“Let them, David. This place has done worse. My parents kicked me out a year after I fucking left this place. The shithole at home was always a wreck. Let the world say things, I'll be there. With my fucking fists balled up. That's not an answer though, asshole!”

“I-I –“ Max is ten seconds from clamping his hand over David's mouth and making him nod his head or shake it when David manages to speak words properly. “I haven't dated much, Max! I have no idea what I'm doing, this has been my life, and if this doesn't work you'll lose the chance to –“

“If it doesn't work, it'll be my choice to lose it.”

“Max –“

“Yes or no, David?”

“...” His gelled back hair looks messy now, as he cranes back his head and tries to weigh this reality upon the one he formerly had. “What if it doesn't work?”

“I'll have to fucking live with that when it happens.”

“What will happen to you?”

He gives a great show of shrugging his shoulders. “Same shit that always does.” Eyes becoming so narrowed he's amazed he can still see through them, he smiles. “I'll survive.”

“W-well... I-I guess...”

“Yes or no.”

“I-if –“

“Yes. Or. No. Asshole.”

His green eyes finally return to focusing on him instead of everything else. Hands shaky, he opens his mouth, shuts it knowingly. Then replies.

“Yes, Max. You could mean more to me.”

He smiles, and it's another one of those times David will commit to memory, a time Max has smiled. He looks relieved instead of frightened, as the teenager pulls away and drinks what remains of his coffee before chucking the styrofoam cup into the trash.

**Author's Note:**

> Caught the flu and had a lot of other things going on. Been busy.
> 
> I really have beefs with this fandom. You guys take a shipping that is harmless if aged up and write it at their ages in the show, that's pretty gross to me. I get friendship and so on, but not this. The problem with most shippings is the age, and the lack of people who use their minds to age up and not write stuff that's squicky. I've never gotten the appeal some fandoms have with shipping kids into sexual situations with adults. You got problems. Fandom fiction's a weird loose line for it, and it's semi-harmless, but if you're going to write long ship-stories, it gets weird to read unless aged up. Everyone grows up eventually.


End file.
